


Always on my own

by freesiafields



Series: Freddie Mercury Weekend 2020 [2]
Category: Queen (Band)
Genre: Boarding School, Childhood Memories, Crying, Drinking, Falling In Love, Freddie Mercury Weekend 2020, Gay Bar, Gay Male Character, Gen, Heartbreak, Hotels, I'm Bad At Tagging, Implied Relationships, India, Leaving Home, Loneliness, Male Homosexuality, One Night Stands, References to Drugs, Sad, Touring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:40:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24587011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freesiafields/pseuds/freesiafields
Summary: Alright... I wanted to write a story for "Is this the real life?" part, too, for Freddie Mercury Weekend 2020. At first, I thought about writing "That Time Freddie Could Not Bear To Be Alone" prompt, but it turned out to be a mishmash from a little bit of everything. Even tho it didn't turn out the way I wanted, I decided to post it anyway. Let me know if I forgot to tag something, and I will add it.
Relationships: Jim Hutton/Freddie Mercury
Series: Freddie Mercury Weekend 2020 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1777204
Comments: 8
Kudos: 20
Collections: Freddie Mercury Weekend 2020!





	Always on my own

**Author's Note:**

> Alright... I wanted to write a story for "Is this the real life?" part, too, for Freddie Mercury Weekend 2020. At first, I thought about writing "That Time Freddie Could Not Bear To Be Alone" prompt, but it turned out to be a mishmash from a little bit of everything. Even tho it didn't turn out the way I wanted, I decided to post it anyway. Let me know if I forgot to tag something, and I will add it.

Freddie's POV

When I was eight years old, my parents sent me to boarding school in India. I will never forget that day. My journey to India is supposed to last for eight weeks. I traveled by a big ship. I thought Dad would come with me, but he just helped me get into my cabin and went back to the dock. I watched through a small round cabin window my family waving goodbye at me. I was very scared because I didn't know what was waiting for me when I got there. I felt abandoned. That feeling is something that will follow me for the rest of my life.

I hated sleeping in that little cabin. It was dark, cold, and quiet. There was not a soul with me either. I would often wake up at night crying. Afterward, I couldn't sleep for a long time because of the rats that passed by, biting everything they found on their way. My only companion in those long nights was a stuffed toy cat that I would hug tightly. My childish mind thought that it would protect me from those evil rats. So lulled into my imagination, I would fall asleep listening to the song of the seagulls and the pounding of the waves against the windows of the ship.

When I got to school, I was happy to see so many other children. I thought I would no longer be alone. The rooms we slept in were spacious. Everyone had their bed. My bed was next to the door of the room. They did not allow us to sleep together in bed. There was one boy who would always come to me when he saw me crying at night. Then we would curl up together under a blanket. But the headmaster would immediately separate us. The kids didn't like me very much because of my protruding teeth. They kept teasing me about it and even gave me a nickname - Bucky. I didn't make many friends there. I missed my family. A picture of my little sister Kashmira waving her little arms at me kept coming to my eyes.

_"Who did you cry for like that last night, Bucky? Is it for your mommy?"_

_"You are such a whiny baby!"_

_"Bucky wetted his bed again!"_

I often wrote letters to my mom and dad. I told them how terrible I felt, how the children were harassing me. I begged them to sign me out of school and take me back home. But they remained indifferent to all this. At night I would wake up crying again. I was embarrassed to be seen, so I cried softly, burying my head deep into the pillow. The silence filled my ears, and it drove me crazy. My sense of loneliness did not stop during the long eight years I spent in the boarding school.

When I turned 18, I moved with my family to London. I had no one there. Just my family and me. It seemed to me that my life had only just begun when I became the lead singer in a band called Queen. There was a crowd of people around me non-stop. You can be in a crowded area and still be the loneliest person because you don't really belong to anyone. Even among so many people, I felt agonizingly lonely.

My bandmates got married at a very young age, and they already had children. I didn't have anyone. All my love relationships failed. I would often be left heartbroken and hurt. Everyone would eventually leave me. That was the hardest thing for me because most of all I longed to love someone and be loved.

The hectic life I led prevented me from having a decent relationship. We were having concerts in a different city every night. I never traveled alone either.

In 1979, I found out that my then-boyfriend, Tony Bastin, had cheated on me. I wanted to go somewhere else as soon as possible. To get away from everyone and everything. I also found out that my roadie, Peter Ratty Hince, will go to London that evening and would be back in Munich the next day. I wanted to leave London. The walls of my apartment were suffocating me. Yes, I lived with a few cats, but they were not humans. Now that I didn’t have a boyfriend, the nights were much colder. I was hoping to find some peace in Munich, recording new songs in the studio.

I called Ratty on the phone: "Ratty?" I asked with a friendly voice.

"Yes…?" he answered.

"There's something else for you to take back to Munich."

"Is it heavy? Will I have to clear it through customs? Not English sausages!? - some of the band have been moaning they miss them."

“It’s Freddie,” I said. "Please take me with you! Don't leave me here. Otherwise, I'll go crazy."

I always had to have someone with me either physically or at least in the next room if we were staying in hotels while on tours. On nights when I couldn't sleep, I watched the dance of light on the ceiling made by the cars that were passing in front of the hotel. Nightmares from my childhood haunted me. I often woke up bathed in sweat with a scream on my lips. I did everything just not to sleep alone in those thin-walled rooms. I would think of all sorts of excuses and ways to sleep with someone, to feel that someone is there with me. That I can look for safeness in the warmth of another human being’s skin when I wake up. Sometimes I wake up in a cold sweat, in fear because I’m alone. That’s why I go out looking for someone who will love me, even if it’s just for a one-night stand. No one wanted to be in a relationship with the "real" Freddie. The way I was off the stage. I was convinced that I would grow old alone, unwanted, and unloved. I wanted to feel safe and protected, wrapped in somebody’s strong arms.

To shut down my own thoughts, I would go to gay clubs. I was slutting myself around, getting drunk, and using drugs in large quantities. Every night I would bring another man to my hotel room. Brian and Roger were worried about me. It was easy for them to tell me to slow down. They had someone to come back to when the tour was over. My homosexuality left me lonely, unable to share my bandmates’ domestic happiness. I knew I would never have the traditional life that the public and my parents expected me to lead. It drove a musical wedge between the band and me. My song ideas and styles are increasingly founded on my experiences in gay clubs. My two biggest inspirations for writing songs were loneliness and heartbreaks.

People have often wondered how I can be single. It's hard for them to believe that somebody like Freddie Mercury could be lonely. In fact, my kind of loneliness is the hardest to bear. Loneliness doesn't mean being shut away in a room by yourself.

My gay club adventures had both good and bad sides. Like everything in life. Of all the places in the world, it was in a gay club that I met Jim, the love of my life. What brought us together was the same fear of loneliness. I loved him very much. When I was on a trip, I would return home a day or two earlier, because I couldn't bear how much I missed him. The downside of my adventures came quietly like a shadow. It loomed over me in the form of an illness that took my life away with each new breath. I was ready for Jim to leave me. I even suggested it to him myself.

“If you want to leave me, I will understand,” I said.

"What?" He asked me. It seemed to me that he had a hard time believing in what he just heard.

“If you want to leave me, I won’t stop you. I will understand,” I repeated.

“But I love you, Freddie. You don’t leave people you love. I will never leave you. I am not going to walk out on you - now or never,” he said hugging me tightly.

For the first time in my life, after so many years, I didn't feel alone or abandoned. 

**Author's Note:**

> What did I do... 
> 
> If you have any prompts or questions, please send them to me on my Tumblr: freesiafields.tumblr.com


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